I’m delighted to report that Will Baude, who will be joining the University of Chicago Law School faculty in January, will be joining the Conspiracy. Will is the author of Rethinking the Federal Eminent Domain Power, 122 Yale Law Journal 1738 (2013), Beyond DOMA: Choice of State Law in Federal Statutes, 64 Stanford Law Review […]
Archive | July, 2013
Possible Change to Florida Law Following the Zimmerman Verdict?
Many people think the Zimmerman verdict was a just application of Florida law, i.e., that there was a reasonable possibility that Zimmerman “reasonably believe[d] that such force [was] necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself.” Many others think the verdict was an unjust application of that law. Many others aren’t sure, […]
Amicus Brief on Standing in ProgressOhio.Org v. JobsOhio
One of Ohio Governor John Kasich’s more controversial initiatives has been the creation of JobsOhio, a private, nonprofit corporation to encourage investment and economic development within the state. The controversy stems, in part, from the fact that JobsOhio is funded by state liquor revenues. The state’s limited ability to audit JobsOhio also remains a point of contention. […]
NYT on Potential “Unlawful Command Influence”
Today’s NYT reports on how the President’s remarks calling for military service members accused of sexual assault to face stiff consequences is creating problems for the prosecution of sexual assault cases in the military. As I noted last month, the President made a speech saying those accused of sexual assault in the military should be “prosecuted, […]
The End of Peak Oil
It seems the neo-Malthusian “peak oil” movement is finally petering out. As Ron Bailey reports, the leading peak oil website, the Oil Drum, will be converting to a static archive. Peak oil arguments seem to have peaked well before oil and gas supplies.
Liberty University v. Lew
On Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit decided Liberty University v. Lew on remand from the Supreme Court after NFIB v. Sebelius. The headline is that the panel unanimously rejected Liberty University’s constitutional and statutory challenges to the individual and employer mandates. The court did not find Liberty University’s Commerce Clause […]
Rethinking “Calories In, Calories Out”
I came across an interesting new paper on SSRN looking at caloric intake and obesity across populations “Macronutrients and Obesity: Revisiting the Calories in, Calories out Framework” by Daniel Riera-Crichton and Nathan Tefft. Here’s the abstract: Recent clinical research has studied weight responses to varying diet composition, but the contribution of changes in macronutrient intake […]
That Reminds Me: Examples and Analogies
When Utah sued the federal government over the 2000 census, a census-taking technique called “hot-deck imputation” was on the hot seat. Utah was none too happy to have lost a representative based on its population estimate, so it argued that “imputation”—inferring who lives in a residence by looking at like neighbors—was essentially “sampling,” which is […]
Could Senate Action After Cloture Reform Moot Noel Canning?
Over at Concurring Opinions, Gerard Magliocca notes that the Senate Democrats are considering a rule change that would bar filibusters for executive branch nominees, and states that “[p]art of the plan (or bluff) involves the confirmation of all the President’s nominees for the vacancies on the NLRB. These are the same vacancies that the President […]
My Summer Vacation, part 1
I have — really! — been doing productive work this summer; more on that later. But I have also spent prodigious amounts of time learning alternate-bass fingerpicking on the guitar, something I’ve longed to be able to do for 30 years or so. [If you don’t know what “alternate-bass fingerpicking” sounds like, listen to the […]
Sixth Circuit Goes En Banc, Vacates Panel Decision on Crack
No surprise there, given the outlandish reasoning of the panel decision in United States v. Blewett.
Unprecedented? My WSJ Op-Ed on the NSA & CFPB Blanket Data Seizures
My op-ed in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on the unconstitutionality of the blanket seizures of private data by the NSA and the CFPB is now online here. Although I believe this type of mass data seizures may be unprecedented, I don’t make that claim in this column. But if it is, it makes a […]
Comment Policy
A reminder about our comment policy, which I would hope more or less reflects how most of you would govern yourselves in your offline lives. 1. We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil — and, especially, free of name-calling. We […]
Court Orders Father to Stop Publicizing Complaints About the Guardian Ad Litem in His Child Custody Case
Fortunately, the New Mexico Court of Appeals has reversed this order — at least unless and until the trial court finds that the material was libelous, something the trial court had not so far done — in Kimbrell v. Kimbrell (N.M. Ct. App. Mar. 13, 2013, though just put on Westlaw in the last day […]
Power Verbs
Here are three sentences from Paul Clement’s Supreme Court brief against the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. When you see bolded language, I’ve replaced Clement’s evocative verb choice with typical lawyer talk. Take a stab at guessing what he actually wrote each time: In all events, the federal government gains nothing by asking the Court […]